NSFW

Yesterday, my colleague Samantha Henig posted about a discussion in Bryant Park about women and sex, led by the writers Erica Jong, Min Jin Lee, and Daphne Merkin, and reported,

Another audience member said she was surprised that, nearly forty years after “Fear of Flying,” women would still be skittish talking about sex. Jong lamented, as she has before, that the generation that followed hers is full of prudes. “We failed to corrupt our daughters,” she said.

Young women are skittish because they expect to be treated as they deserve and have every right to expect to be—as equals in the workplace. They’re skittish because they understand that if they speak casually about sex it will be hard to avoid being seen as an object of desire; they’re skittish because they know enough about sexual harassment to avoid giving bosses and teachers, and, for that matter, peers, the idea that they’re interested in starting something. The age of sexual revolution was more open about the positive merits of sex than about its abuse in power relations. Young women today are more closed-mouthed about sex because they’re more conscious of its instrumentalization—because they’re asserting their right to have sex as a choice, not as a job requirement or course requirement. The sexual revolution is also about the right to say no, and this freedom, which is inseparable from equality at work and in public life, is what their mothers fought for.

P.S. And with the increased exposure of private life in the semi-public forum of social media—and the increased scrutiny of social media by employers, current and prospective—whatever uninhibited discussion of sex a smart and prudent (not prudish) young person engages in will likely be offline and off the grid.

P.P.S. This is why France, in the wake of the accusations brought against Dominique Strauss-Kahn and the reports that followed, is about to undergo a culture shock.